Chapter V3 Ch 3: The Raccoon |
The raccoon kept her home on Sixth Down, where the natural caves held barely a pretense at shaping; a place that humanity and their militia had once come to, but never stayed in. And they’d certainly never left lamps behind. Aaron picked his way sightlessly down a stone slope after the others, sliding as much as walking, catching up against the next stalagmite, then the next, to stop himself from falling too far. He’d seen this path by lamplight, when he’d been younger: the way the stone pillars looked like candles badly melted, their centers stretched thin where stalactite and stalagmite met, their sides covered in drips that moved on a timescale no strict-kept human would live to see.
It was a place to pass through; a place that noticed them as much as a mountain noticed mice. Clev navigated it by the smells of others who’d gone before. The blacksmith and her folks trusted his soft calls to lead them on. Aaron checked the way they were being led against the little carvings the Faces had notched into the stalagmites’ bases. Rose breathed soft and steady against his shoulder, her grip tightening each time he skidded down. Lochlann was the only one behind him. Aaron waited for the man to near hit him before he moved on from each stop.
Careful, he could have said. But Twokins could speak for itself. The river rushed below them, loud in its hunger, and no one needed a light to know what lay at this slope’s final drop.
The water’s was misting up against them by the time they’d gone low enough to find the right crack to slip through. It was a quick close climb after that, on hands and knees, to one of the few properly carved out places down here. There were easier ways to reach it, but not quicker ones. A light shone around the edges of the fabric hanging in front. Aaron preemptively squinted as the blacksmith brushed it aside. Clever Hands stood up on his hind paws and stretched back up to human. He cracked his back at the top, all casually, like he wasn’t keeping one eye on the lieutenant and his red coat the whole time.
…Or Aaron, and his red coat.
“You’ll warn her we’re here?” Aaron asked.
Clev flicked an ear. Gave his back one last thump, and went inside.
Aaron gave it a minute. There was talking, all right, though he couldn’t much make out what it was. People didn’t tend towards talking loud, this far down.
“You with me?” Aaron asked, to the warm lump fogging up his shoulder.
“You with me?” Aaron repeated, his gaze shifting only slightly, and Lochlann startled out of trying to keep watch on every direction at once. On the door, covered by its hanging; on the hole they’d just crawled out of, where anything else might crawl from; on the darkness past them, which Aaron knew to be a pretty straight forward sort of tunnel, but which must look to the good lieutenant like forbidding darkness and more forbidding darkness.
“How do you see?” Lochlann asked.
“Little kids carry get to carry lights, sometimes,” Aaron said. “But for the most part? You don’t.”
That should have been enough time. He brushed the hanging aside, and stepped inside.
The front room of the raccoon’s clinic was… small. Aaron hadn’t ever thought of it as small—remembered it as one of the largest single rooms he’d ever been in—but there it was and here he stood and the whole of it could have fit in his rooms up at the castle. The straw-stuffed beds had been as warm and soft a place to steal a nap as any when he was little, but they were dirty. Dirty even though he’d done his fair share of boiling and beating their covers, of re-stuffing the parts of them that someone had gone and fouled by letting their inside parts get on the outside. They were jammed up against each other on the floor with barely the room to kneel between them. And though Aaron had gotten a bit taller, the ceiling felt so much lower, and the single oil lamp didn’t even have a decent reflector to brighten its diffuse glow. There’d been surgeries done by that light.
“What’s wrong?” Lochlann asked him lowly, guarding his back even as Aaron had stopped like a fool in the doorway. Everything was the answer the redcoat had known before they’d ever got down here, so how could Aaron explain to him that he’d only just noticed?
The raccoon was seated just next to the light, looking as human as she ever got, like someone had stretched a real raccoon up to Aaron’s shoulder then given her a shave. Or mange. She’d a bucket of water in front of her, her thin claw-tipped fingers washing and washing and washing the same tools over and over again, the way she did when she needed something to worry. The fur around her eyes was black, her eyebrows white; the rest of the hair on her head—and her body at large—had gone silver-speckled with age. She always cut her head hair, the human sort, short. Aaron wasn’t sure if it was to make it easier to groom out the usual Twokins bugs, or because she’d never gotten used to her hair growing human-long. Behind her, the blacksmith was standing in the doorway to the back rooms, which was all the farther she’d gotten before the rest of her family had come boiling out to meet her. It looked like it had been nap time for the littlest one when all this started: the kid was reaching up to hug her about the knee, and didn’t have on any pants, but did have his little scrap-sewn cat tucked high under one arm. Their eldest was shoulder-high now, and holding the original enclave bow much the same. So that was priorities, from the both of them. The final adult in their little group had figured out a path through the children, and was standing on tiptoe to alternate kisses between the smith and her roommate’s heads, which was a thing Aaron was pleased to leave them to.
And Clever Hands was leaning against the wall near the girl with the crossbow, doing absolutely nothing as the raccoon took one look at Aaron and Lochlann and went fishing for her newly cleaned scalpels. Which made Lochlann heft his borrowed sword. And then the eldest was lifting the crossbow and one of the middle ones squeaked and started shoving their adults to face them while another grabbed for the nearest heavy thing for throwing, and Rose was trying to struggle upright and off his back like she was in any shape for fighting. Aaron shoved himself back out the door and around the side, taking every stupid militia member with them. A pot broke against the far wall, in a line with where the good lieutenant’s skull had been.
“Clev,” Aaron called out, all friendly-like, “Did you not warn them?”
“Do folks need warning about you, now?” Clev called back, all innocent, weasel-adjacent creature that he was.
Aaron did not appreciate having this conversation now.
“Aaron?” the raccoon asked, from inside, her voice with its usual soft warble.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She huffed. “Don’t tell me you’ve been out knifing ratcatchers. A red coat’s a tasteless trophy to keep.”
“I will definitely not be telling you that, ma’am,” Aaron said.
Lochlann gave him a sort of you could have just said you hadn’t glance, which was as good a way to redirect Lochlann’s attention as any.
“We’ve enough of that going around,” the raccoon said. “Such a waste of life.”
Lochlann’s hand eased a bit on his sword, because Lochlann heard life and not waste. The raccoon wasn’t one to waste. And there weren’t many medical texts down here she’d not written herself. Using the materials at hand, one could say.
“Did you bring me anything?” she called.
“Just some friends of mine,” Aaron said, to put the most important part up first. “One of them cut her hand. Needs stitches, and won’t stop bleeding. Might be it’s got Letforget in it.”
“Letforget?” the raccoon’s voice perked up, and he could imagine her ears doing the same. “Bring her in, bring her in.”
Aaron did. And didn’t even have to duck any thrown pottery to do so.
The blacksmith was already herding her not-so-little family through the curtain in back, and since when had they been on friendly enough terms with the raccoon for that. Aaron caught a glimpse of their littlest scowling fiercely over her shoulder before the hanging slipped closed. Clever Hands stayed where he was. So did their eldest, her crossbow still in hand, Clev’s clawed finger pressing its aim towards the floor. Which likely had more to do with not wasting bolts than it did with not wasting Aarons.
The raccoon was searching her cabinets with dripping hands, and no one there already ready with a towel. Aaron stepped over, and toed open the right one for her. She pulled out a little towel and got herself dry.
“Where’s your Face?” Aaron asked.
“Out,” she said, and dried, and kept drying, the towel working the same scrubbing circles as her washing had done. There was more than one reason her hands were the most hairless part of her. “She went to check that the way to Seventh Down was clear, after this lot came barging in.”
And she hadn’t come back. It wasn’t a thing that needed more questions. But a distraction was welcome enough.
She handed off her towel to him—he tossed it to the laundry basket—then went carefully balancing past with her nice clean hands held high off the floor. It had about the same effect as a dog walking on its hind legs. The raccoon was the least human-looking doppel Aaron had ever met. Which was odd, given how little she actually shifted, but some people were just like that.
The bed she chose was arbitrary. She crouched down to smooth creases out of its cover once, then again; Aaron picked her usual basket of supplies off a counter and got it in her hands before she could do so a third time, breaking her from her loop before she could get properly started.
“Show me, show me,” the raccoon chittered.
Aaron eased Rose down to the bed. The princess helped some, which was as good a sign as any. Its sheet was bleached, and still smelled of it; the stains of its former patients were as faint as they were getting. The princess made a little noise; maybe of pain, maybe of revulsion. Neither was going to get her back out of that bed until the raccoon was done with her. She made little grabby-paw motions, then—when the princess didn’t react fast enough—simply snatched the girl’s hand and started peeling back Aaron’s best attempts at bandaging. This came with a steady stream of affronted growling that hit Aaron’s ears as comforting.
Rose did not look comforted. Neither did Lochlann, who seemed torn between guarding the outer door, keeping his eyes on the stoat doppel, and staying between his princess and the pre-teen with the isle’s most deadly crossbow. Adding the world’s largest raccoon into the mix didn’t seem to be helping his nerves any, though at least he was doing an admirable job of looking like he was just holding his borrowed sword instead of twitching to stab someone with it.
“Keep watch at the door, would you?” Aaron asked him.
Lochlann declined to move. Clever Hands opted to snort. Aaron didn’t know what he saw in either of them.
“How long ago?” the raccoon asked, peering this way and that at the revealed cut, like that would make the light any better.
“Around when the bells started,” said Aaron, who had better sense than that. Time did strange things, when a fellow thought he might die.
The raccoon pulled the princess’ hand even closer. Sniffed it. Rose and Lochlann both looked at him, like he was the one with his nose twitching over blood.
“Iron,” the raccoon said, holding one hand out to the side, like she expected it to already be there. Aaron waited a moment, while those claw-tipped fingers kept flexing right near his face. Then he got up, grabbed her little tin of iron shavings from one of the little shelves carved directly into the stone, and put it in her hand. Her fingers sprang like a rat trap around the thing. She didn’t thank him, if she’d even noticed it was him that had gotten it for her.
“Is that a good—?” started the princess, as the raccoon tapped out a line of shavings directly on the wound. Then Rose was hissing and trying to pull away, and Aaron was gripping Lochlann’s sword arm as tight as the raccoon was gripping Rose’s wrist. The shavings were sparking, like little embers just stirred up.
“Still active,” the raccoon reported, with pricked-ear delight. “Wonderful. Though not for you,” she added, with the barest of glances up. At which point she finally, finally noticed the princess’ fey mark.
The raccoon blinked.
Rose tried to jerk her hand free, hard.
The raccoon wrapped both hands around her wrist with the sort of reflexes that didn’t lean towards letting things go.
“Anything special I need to know to treat you?” she asked.
“I’m human,” Rose said, still tugging.
“So are most down here,” said the raccoon. “Most are something else, too. I ask everyone.”
“She does,” Aaron confirmed. And picked up the iron shavings, got their lid back on, and shook them next to the healer’s hands. One of them snapped out to grab it. Which wasn’t a complete success, but at least Rose would have half as many bruises at the end.
The shavings were still sparking, and popping. The little jerks Rose was giving might not be so intentional as all that. Aaron made sure Lochlann wasn’t about to stab anyone, then went to get a cloth and water. The raccoon’s fingers twitched, but she relinquished her hold—and her place next to Rose—for Aaron to start cleaning the cut. He dunked it quick, to squish the iron off; they’d worry about all the blood later. The raccoon, meanwhile, had fished her favorite curved needle out, and toddled off to sterilize it in their only light source.
“…Would it have done that if I were human?” Rose whispered, as the shavings fell like little stars to the bottom of the water, their light fading.
“That was the Letforget it was reacting too,” the raccoon said, with her big ears swiveled towards them. “But if you don’t know for sure you’re fey, we can test you for that, too.”
Rose declined.
Then it was time for the stitches. And the sorts of conversations that took one’s mind off of stitches.
“Is this were you lived?” Rose asked, looking around with the face of someone trying to be polite.
The raccoon’s clinic would meet no standards set by uptown doctors. But it was clean as a cave could be, and the memories shoved up in their raccoon’s head had been a trained hedge wife’s even before the raccoon herself started adding to them. That wasn’t nothing.
“This is nicer than where I lived,” Aaron said, instead of any of that.
“Then why do you know where everything is?” she asked.
“It was as good a place to be, when I didn’t want to be elsewhere.”
“I see,” said Rose, who did. Then she winced, and kept not looking down at the thing that was making her wince, because she’d never needed to be sewn up like a torn sheet before.
“Do you want some brandy?” Aaron offered.
“Aaron,” Lochlann sighed, but at least Rose giggled. And didn’t reply, which he let lie as a “no.”
“Do you react to iron?” the raccoon asked her, three stitches in.
“…I was generally not placed in a position to know,” Rose said.
“You ever touched it at all?” asked the raccoon, with her usual patience.
“Only briefly. Or indirectly.”
“Right, then. We’re going to test you.”
The princess’ eyes had gone steely as a thirteen year old’s could. “Why?”
“Because the Letforget’s got teeth in you,” the raccoon said, nodding down at the princess’ hand. “And it’ll take more than a little sprinkling to pry them out.”
“Is this a fey test?”
“It’s an allergy test,” the raccoon said, the darker fur about her eyes making them look large and earnest. “Wouldn’t even give a brownie more than a rash.”
The princess narrowed her eyes. The raccoon stabbed another stitch into her.
“Can you read?” the raccoon asked.
Rose’s affront was immediate.
“Good,” said the raccoon, and flicked an ear towards Aaron. “You read now, too?”
“Badly,” Aaron said.
“Top shelf. Thin little book with a blue spine.”
The raccoon’s handwriting was blocky and large, like it was written by someone who’d never quite gotten used to having opposable thumbs. For all that, it was more legible to him than all the illuminated manuscripts in the world. Injuries of the Letforget was a collection of the raccoon’s own case studies. There weren’t many. People who ran afoul of old magic laying forgotten about generally didn’t need a healer, one way or the other.
Rose didn’t wait for Aaron to finish reading each page before she flipped to the next one. She also didn’t pay half so much attention to the rest of her stitches, so Aaron just picked up what he could. It was an unpleasant sort of read. The kind where the raccoon’s writing got more and more detailed, her writing stopping and starting and getting organized in lists. A person should never want their physician making lists of them. Particularly not when comparisons to dried corn husks or mummified bat bodies were being made.
“This isn’t how the Letforget works,” Rose protested.
“Might not be how it works,” the raccoon amiably agreed, tying off her final stitch, “but it’s what it does. I did manage to save that last woman, you’ll see. So we’ve got either salt or iron to treat you, and I wouldn’t much recommend salt on open wounds. This won’t be bleeding much after I finish stitching it up, but if the blood doesn’t thicken underneath, it’ll never heal. If it doesn’t heal, it’s an infection that will do you in, no matter how well we keep your blood on the inside. It’s best to test you now, and if you don’t react, we’ll start the real treatment tomorrow.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“And this isn’t a fey test?” Rose asked, deeply skeptical.
“Anyone can have a skin allergy,” said the raccoon. “If you want a fey test, I can make you tea. Or we can just leave it at this, and see what comes of it,” she said, waggling the princess’ new-stitched hand up and down. “You’ll be in my case notes either way.”
Rose snatched her hand away. The raccoon let her, this time.
“How does the test work?” Rose asked.
It worked like this: they’d shake a bit of iron on a bandage, put it on her skin—not the bleeding part—and let it sit there overnight. If she didn’t get all red, then iron was safe for her to be touching.
So the raccoon did that, while Aaron grabbed another roll of sanitized-if-not-clean fabric, and got to doing up her hand. She wasn’t bleeding much now: just dripping a bit, like a waterskin with bad seams.
“Do you have any pine pitch?” Aaron asked.
“All out,” reported the raccoon, who didn’t exactly live in a place where pine trees were abundant.
“Is pitch… sanitary?” asked Rose.
The raccoon shrugged. “It’s how the trees keep infections out. Good enough for a tree, good enough for me,” said a woman who’d a closer relationship to trees than most.
Rose had apparently never considered where medicines came from. And was suddenly fascinated by the topic, in a sort of lagging, tired way, which probably had more to do with the blood loss than the adrenaline crash. The adrenaline crash was what was what had Aaron’s own hands shaking.
Clev had slid down the wall awhile ago, dramatic as could be, to show how bored he was with them. His head was canted towards the main door, but not so far he couldn’t see them. His arms were crossed, but in a way that set his hidden hand on the hilt of his knife. His claw-tipped foot was going twitch-twitch-twitch all the while. And his shoulder was propping open the room curtain behind him, just enough to see a sliver of the life behind it.
The littlest kids had gotten wrangled to nap time, by the expedience of wrapping one huge blanket around them, with an older kid on either side to keep the gigglers pinned. Nap time didn’t wait on dragon invasions. And, more to the point, blanket cocoons kept little hands out of the way. The blacksmith’s roommates were checking through the various supplies they’d brought down with them, organizing and consolidating and generally fretting. It was all well and good to have bags packed so one could grab them and run, but the system broke down when you went months without updating the size of the children’s clothes they’d stored, or took some food out because it was about to go bad anyway, and it wasn’t like they’d forget to repack later. Surely they wouldn’t.
It was later, and they had. The question was whether to risk heading back up to get more, or hoping someone had enough to trade with them when they got down to Seventh Down.
Wondering if they even could go to Seventh Down. The lowest part of the plateau wasn’t so much a singular level as the name for everything below Sixth—everything past where humans had stopped their mapping. The rats had rules on sharing the space, when true emergencies came. But the rats hadn’t ruled Twokins for centuries, and those rules of theirs hadn’t been tested in near as long. Seventh Down had better places to hole up than this little clinic, with its curtain for a door. But it was usually only doppels allowed that deep.
Lochlann was sneaking glances in on the family like he was trying to guess which were human enough. The joke was on him: none of them were. Or at least, they hadn’t been the last Aaron was here. Their eldest liked to go running off with the rats on food runs, when she wasn’t helping around the forge, so that might have changed if she’d gotten serious about joining the colony. She sat now next to her mother, handing off tools as the third adult in her family quietly requested each. The smith herself was fiddling with another prototype of the crossbows, one that looked only a quick bit of work off from finished. She worked on it like her roommates worked on rechecking the bags, like the raccoon had gone back to washing her tools.
Twitch-twitch-twitch went Clev’s paw, as he watched Lochlann watching.
And then there was the sort of soft sound that came real loud in the caves: someone’s foot catching a rock, and sending it clattering down the tunnel outside. Clev was at the door in four silent strides. Lochlann was there quicker, if not so quiet. Aaron worried for a second about them being so shoulder-to-shoulder, but the both of them had their blades pointed out.
A perfectly human-seeming hand drew the curtain back. The raccoon’s Face took one thoughtless step inside before she caught up with her own eyes. Then she was bolting back down the hall, like any sane person would.
Clev spared one glare at Lochlann next to him—“Take off that coat!”—and then he was running out too, because they didn’t need every patient the raccoon had ever treated coming to stab them.
They were back a moment later, with the Face panting from the dash.
“Hello,” Aaron waved.
“Should have known you were back,” she said, between breaths. “Haven’t had this many heart attacks in a day since you left.”
“I am not responsible for dragons,” Aaron said.
“Aren’t you?”
Absolutely no one answered her. Aaron scowled, and she quirked her lips, then edged her way around Lochlann with the look of a person who’d still have pegged him as a ratcatcher even if he had ditched the coat. To be fair, Lochlann was very Lochlann-looking. And he needed to stop looking at everyone here like he was checking them over for fur.
“You finally get doppeled?” the raccoon’s Face asked Aaron, touching her hair.
…Right where his own had turned white, from the Spring Lord’s casual color matching.
“I think a reindeer tried to stake a claim on me,” Aaron said.
“Huh,” she said. And turned to her master. “Well, it’s definitely dragons, though I imagine you’ve heard that by now. Seems like almost all of Third made it down, with most of the upper two are coming after—someone’s opened a route the dragons can’t block, somehow. People are saying it was Letforget. They also say there’s a big dead dragon half blocking the way, so at least they’re coming down slow. Which is good, since everyone from lower just figured out the Raffertys have…” she trailed off, eyeing Lochlann even more clinically than he’d eyed her. “...The Raffertys aren’t in a sharing mood. They’ve sealed the entrances. Everywhere a human could fit. Or a dragon, if if we’re being generous with their motivations. There’s not much fighting yet, but that’s going to change if the militia keeps pushing lower.”
“Injuries?” the raccoon asked.
“Nothing much on ours. A couple of bad ones among the strict-kepts that fought. No sign of any hedge wives in their lot. Or if there are, they didn’t bring anything useful with them.”
The raccoon made a sort of chittering noise under her breath. “They’ll not be letting me treat them. And I’ll not have them here. You’ll bring them supplies.”
The Face paused what she was doing. It was the kind of pause that pointed out what she was doing: already packing a rather hefty bag.
Her master chittered again, much closer to a laugh.
Lochlann was still hovering near the door. With his back to it, and to Clev, which were two situations Aaron was keeping an eye on. And Clev was eyeing Aaron right back with a little smirk, doing his stupid knife-rolling trick over the back of his knuckles, like Aaron wouldn’t call him out if that blade slipped.
“There a reason we’ve got a ratcatcher in here?” the Face asked, conversationally.
“One guess,” Clev said.
She snorted. Her hands flitted over the shelves, grabbing down clay jars, tipping portions of their contents into little bags rather like—rather exactly like—the ones in Aaron’s pocket pharmacy. “I’m going to have issues, boiling enough water without showing them to any of the good spots.”
“Get them butchering the dragon, if anyone’s got a blade solid enough to pry up the scales,” Aaron said, and tapped at his chest. “There’s a gland, about here. You can burn the tar.” He’d seen the butchering out on the beaches at Salt’s Mane; dragon tar fueled that huge lamp up in their lighthouse.
“…I did miss your advice, Aaron.”
“Sketch it for me,” the raccoon said, tucking a journal into her Face’s bag, and incidentally taking out a roll of bandages to make room for it. “I don’t have anything on dragon anatomy. A tar gland. And tar smoke. Have they studied the health effects?”
The Face caught the roll, and shoved it back in. “Am I prioritizing the dragon or the people?”
“Their corpses keep,” Aaron said, before the raccoon could make any impolitic choices in front of his uptown friends. “Takes a few days to butcher them, and the meat stays good. They even bury some in the sand to eat later.”
“Huh,” she said again, and shouldered her pack. “Right. Time to find a dead dragon, then.”
“It’s at the stairs nearest here, straight up,” Aaron said. And then, before he could get blamed for any stair-blocking he didn’t want to claim, he pointed. “Clev did it.”
“Oh thanks much,” Clever Hands said. And then snapped his mouth shut, with a scowl that said he was not going to be tricked into banter.
The raccoon’s Face had a few years on the both of them. But she was a fun one to hang out with, when hanging out was a thing they’d time for. Like an older sister, Aaron had thought, before he’d met his actual older sister, who’d turned out to be far too interested in teaching him table manners and swords.
...He was not going to think about Adelaide, just now.
The young woman who wasn’t and never would be his sister shouldered her bag. Then she paused to glance at herself. She set the bag down, and pushed through the curtain to the back room, past the smith and her eldest who’d come to watch, in the way people casually holding weapons do. When she came back out, she was wearing an equally old but significantly less patched coat. Fancy, having a spare one she could use for trips upstairs.
...Not actually fancy, though. Because that coat was like the raccoon’s whole space: a thing he’d remembered as extraordinary, when it was really just dirt.
He was wearing a coat gifted to him by a king, a cloak from an acting duchess, and a stag skin borrowed off a spymaster. He still had a dandelion wilting in the tie of his ponytail, tucked there by a princess. The Spring Lord had styled his hair. He didn’t get to call people out for being fancy.
She shouldered her bag again, now she looked like more of an uptown sort.
“I’ll take the crystal path up.” It was a roundabout route, and unlikely to lead back here, if it were humans that tried following. “I’ll probably stay with them a bit after; see what I can hear. Unless they start talking rat hunts.”
The raccoon patted her arm in approval. The Face shoved Aaron’s head down, in passing. He snapped his teeth after her hand, which passed for a polite retort in these parts.
She wasn’t his sister. But she was alive, which was worth more in the end.
There were no more noises in the dark after she’d gone, much as Clev kept swiveling his ears for them. The blacksmith had gone back for her tool bag, and had set up just outside of the room where her roommates were still packing and re-packing. She’d a little hand drill, and was going creak creak creak against the stock of her prototype. In lieu of a proper table and clamps, she was having the eldest pin it to the ground with both hands, a foot, and the full weight of her body. The other kids, no stranger to loud goings on in the next room over, were no more or less asleep than they’d been before. Rose was starting to fall asleep, too. With her nose in her borrowed book, which was the natural habitat of a library fey.
“May I ask your name?” asked Lochlann, of their host.
“I’m a raccoon,” said the raccoon, who was tidying up after her Face. “And you’re a bit late in asking.”
“…I see,” he said, and returned to Aaron’s side.
Clev made little stabby-stabby jabs at the good lieutenant’s back as he walked, flashing his teeth at Aaron. Everyone in the room noticed except for the redcoat. And Rose, whose eyes had drifted closed.
“Is it safe here?” Lochlann asked low, like someone who’d grown up around strict-kept humans had any idea how low a fellow really needed to talk to not be heard.
“No,” Aaron said, which should absolutely not have come as a surprise to the man. Aaron only elaborated on the reasons not in this room. “We didn’t do anything to obscure our trail, just moved fast. Any dragon doppel could fit where we’ve fit, and there’s no good way of blocking off the clinic.”
The redcoat eyed Clever Hands, rather belatedly. And the raccoon, like she was dangerous in the same ways Clev was. “Can you trust them?”
He still wasn’t talking near low enough.
Clever Hands laughed. “You’re asking him for advice on trust?”
Lochlann ignored the stoat doppel, in a way he really shouldn’t. “How do we get out of here?”
Not where do we go. They’d talked about that already, Aaron realized: about taking the royal twins and running south. That was still a thing they could do. Except that Lochlann hadn’t been south since he was a kid, so far as Aaron knew, and likely didn’t have many friends left there. And Aaron looked like their dead dukeling, and all the lords and ladies Adelaide had so graciously explained his situation to were as dead as—
Still not thinking about that. Didn’t change things, didn’t help, didn’t matter.
Lochlann shifted to sit down, right next to Aaron. He set his dull-edged sword over his legs. Aaron hadn’t gotten around to giving the man its sheath yet, which was another thing that didn’t matter, because it was just a stupid dull blade that Aaron had never wanted to learn.
At least dull blades were a thing that could be fixed. He looked to the blacksmith. “Do you have a blade we can borrow? Or could you sharpen his sword, when you’ve the tools and the time?”
“Give me back my dagger,” said the blacksmith, never looking up. Creak creak creak.
Why did everyone get hung up on little things like that. “It’s not even for me.”
“I’m not arming your pet redcoat, Aaron.”
Worth the try.
“She’ll sleep sometime,” Aaron assured his pet redcoat. Which got him a one-eyed glare from the smith, though she didn’t actually pause her work.
And a sigh from Lochlann, who seemed to think he was making jokes at a time like this. “Aaron. Please focus. How do we get out, without the dragons noticing?”
“There are cracks,” Aaron said. “All throughout the plateau, if you know where to look. We can make it to the forest through one. But if the dragons want to keep people bottled up, they’re likely watching the passes.”
The valley in which Onekin rested had two such passes, and a whole lot of mountain climbing for anyone spurning them. One lead back east to Salt’s Mane. One lead south.
Clev’s head followed his ears, and snapped Aaron’s way. “You’re leaving?”
“You want me to stay?” Aaron asked.
Clev didn’t reply. It wasn’t like this was his conversation, anyway.
“Your grandmother said you’d asked her about routes,” Aaron said, looking to Lochlann again. “Do you think you can get take us through, even if something in the sky doesn’t want us leaving?”
It was Lochlann’s turn to forgo reply. Not that Aaron had expected different. He still remembered looking up through trees on a forester road, weeks ago, and realizing the dragon overhead had already seen him. Skies were entirely too open and unfair of places. It felt good, having solid stone over his head again, hiding them away.
“What was she talking about, earlier, that… woman?” Lochlann asked, changing the subject.
“Call her the raccoon’s Face,” Aaron said. “Most aren’t going to know her name on its own, but everyone will know her by that.”
And he wasn’t going to hand out a name she hadn’t granted herself, even if someone else might have. It wasn’t as if half the people who called him Aaron had bothered with talking to him directly.
“What was she talking about, earlier? The Raffertys? Sealing entrances?”
“There are places we hide, when the rat hunts come through,” Aaron said, trying not to make it sound like it was just the one place now, really. The folks in Twokins might know the lower caves better, but centuries of rat hunts had lead the militia to finding most of their boltholes, like ants marching aimless until they found food. The resulting swarm certainly shared similarities, particularly in its bite. “The Raffertys have blocked the ways in to one of them.”
“And soon we’ll have the militia coming down on our heads,” Clev said.
“Most of us can hide among them,” the blacksmith said, with the briefest of glances to Lochlann. “So long as no one gets chatty.”
“Most can,” Aaron agreed. But that wasn’t everyone. The raccoon couldn’t hide among the militia, and even shifted small, she wouldn’t fit through a rat entrance. None of the larger doppels could. That’s what Seventh Down was for. The backup forges were down there, too, and he wasn’t alone in already feeling the need for those.
The blacksmith blew over the little hole she’d made, and picked up a screw.
“How did humanity do this before?” Aaron asked. “The plateau was literally built to keep dragons out. Burning a few weapons rooms shouldn’t have been enough to take the place like this.”
“It had the Letforget, before,” said Rose, who wasn’t as asleep as she’d seemed. And still didn’t see the need to open her eyes for this conversation, though one of her fingers was slowly tracing the edge of a page she’d not turned in long minutes.
“We need to bring everyone else lower,” Aaron said, because it was the only thing they could do. “If we take only the routes humans can use, and no larger, they’ll not be able to track us by scent if they come looking. We can at least get everyone to the river that way.”
Securing water was a place to start.
“And why would we let you lower, when every place your new friends see is one more they’ll come to root us from when this is done?” Clever Hands asked, leaning back against the wall. “You’re literally a redcoat, Aaron.”
Aaron tugged his sister’s cloak around himself more, though its argent exterior was a little more cave-colored from wear. Over it was the stag skin, but that one wasn’t so large as to allow for hiding things under. He really should ditch the coat. It wasn’t a ratcatcher’s, the cut was totally different, but… but that was a thing a person would only see if they didn’t just see red. Which was all Aaron himself would have seen, when he’d first left Twokins. He was warm enough in just the cloak; he didn’t need the coat, not with it pointing out how blood-colored and ready for jabbing he was.
But Orin had given it to him, which wasn’t a thing he’d be able to say again.
Coat crises aside, Rose had bothered opening her eyes again, just so she could stare at the stoat doppel like he was dumb as the rock behind him.
“ ‘When this is done,’ ” she echoed. “When it’s done? It’s not going to be done. Didn’t you hear me? They had the Letforget, before. There’s nothing now. It’s… it’s like ashes, or burnt wood, all dead and cold and cracked. It doesn’t guard here anymore. Or up there, either.”
“So just do your thing,” Clev said, wiggling his hand.
“With what blood?” the princess asked.
The stoat opened his mouth, like that was a point that could be argued. The blacksmith’s eldest shot a look his way. One that didn’t include Rose, given that the girl had kept her back to Rose this whole time.
“You can’t talk to her like that,” she said.
“She’s not a fey,” Clever Hands said, his own eyes not leaving the princess. He’d not flinched from looking at her this whole time. “She’s Rose O’Shea, the princess.”
So Clev had recognized her. When those outside the castle generally did not, for the very good reason of her being hidden away for most of her life. It was possible he’d seen her or heard her description, as she’d been out and about this spring. But there was an older, simpler reason for him to know what she looked like.
Clev shifted his eyes back to Aaron. Meet his gaze, and held them, in that way that used to mean he knew exactly what Aaron was thinking. It still meant that, now. Only now it was a thing come at from the other side; not a comfort, not a sharing. Just a knowing. Aaron didn’t look away first, because it was done and dead between them, and the past didn’t change just because of wanting. He didn’t even know if he did want it.
Four Kindly Souls had entered the castle, by his hand knowing and Rose’s not, at the Wake for the Old Year last winter. Aaron hadn’t asked for details on their plans. But they’d gone in to kill two royal children. Chancellor and Armaan had died at Orin’s hands, or his guard’s. More details Aaron hadn’t asked for. Maybe Clev had been with them: Orin was the eldest, a blooded fighter, and three assassins for their more experienced target would have been about right for true overkill; it was only Aaron sounding the alarm that had saved Orin last time, as his own Death could have attested. But Gwen and Clev had always made for a good team, and it would have been an odd thing, her going after Rose all alone. Had Clev been scouting the halls when it had all gone down, looking for signs of when the princess might be back? Or had he been there in the room, a little enough creature to go unseen near anywhere, watching as Aaron’s knife went in?
No matter whether Clev had seen things with his own eyes or not, Aaron had left that room alive and ultimately trusted by the royal family. Gwen hadn’t. There was little enough else to know.
“Doesn’t matter,” Clev said, still holding his gaze. “We let you lower, you’ll stab us in the back soon as you’re done with us. If you’d even want our help in the first place. It’ll be the rat hunts all over again, but with us showing your folks exactly where to find us. The Raffertys were asses to seal Seventh Down so soon, but they were right that it needed doing. Let the dragons and the militia have at each other; it’s no business of ours.”
For the first time in his life, Aaron was a you, not an ours.
“Doesn’t seem like those dragons mean to leave,” Aaron said, looking straight back. “This is a siege now.”
“We’ve supplies enough for ours,” Clev said.
“Great,” said Aaron. “So we’ll all have enough, once we’re done killing each other by half.”
The stoat doppel bared his teeth. “And how will they find us, Aaron?”
“You know how,” said Aaron, who’d already killed for Rose, and liked her even better now than he had then. Those were her people Clev was talking about. Though there was still the matter of them turning on her for using the Letforget. But if she still wanted them alive, and didn’t want them living on a staircase—starving on a staircase—for however long this lasted, he’d be on her side
It wasn’t as if he could go back. He was here, and Clev was, but Gwen never would be.
Besides him, the good lieutenant cleared his throat, like a man about to put his foot in a family spat. “We worked with the griffins in the north. The militia did, against the dragons. We could… extend that truce, to the south. I do not personally find weasels to be more objectionable than griffins.”
“I’m a stoat,” Clev said. “Not a weasel.”
“…My apologies,” offered Lochlann.
The stoat snorted, and looked back to Aaron. “It’s still not happening.”
Rose set down her book.
“And who are you to decide that?” she asked. “I am Princess Rose O’Shea. In the absence of my brothers, I am acting queen. Who died to make you king?”
Aaron was uncomfortably aware of every Twokins eye in the room turning to him, however briefly. Even the smith looked up from her workings.
“No one here’s king,” he said. He stopped watching Clev long enough to turn to Rose. “Lochlann and I had a plan, to take you south. If we needed to. I’ll admit this wasn’t how we pictured the needing, but--”
“I am not abandoning my city, Aaron,” said the princess, who would be hard pressed to abandon even her bed at the moment.
He’d expected that answer. Unfortunately. And it wasn’t as if running with her would have been an easy thing, or the south a place he knew anything about. But Twokins? He knew Twokins.
“Right,” Aaron said, and reiterated, just to make it clear: “No one here’s king. Though I assume the Raffertys are playing at it still?”
Clev gave a grudging sort of shrug. Aaron gave a nod, and turned his eyes on the blacksmith.
“You’ve got enough with you to set up at your backup forge?” he asked.
“I’ve been moving things since your first note,” she said, as grudgingly as Clev. “Which, again, could have been much clearer.”
Another thing in the past. He wasn’t going to argue on how much he hadn’t known, when he’d first sent her a misspelled letter and an enclave bow to copy, on the off chance it was needed. They were here now, and it was needed, and things he couldn’t have done different didn’t matter. What they did from now did.
“You need your forge, or we’re out of luck on weapons; if we don’t have proper weapons, we’ve already lost. So we need the Raffertys to open up. If they do, Seventh Down will be as good a place as any to put the uptowners, if we can keep their weapons pointed the right direction.”
Clev had another snort for that. The blacksmith’s eldest had paused in her helping, because looking dubiously at him was what she’d deemed most important.
“We’ve people here with experience in that, and the authority to order it,” Aaron said, looking to Second Lieutenant Lochlann Varghese, son of the militia’s leader. And to Princess Rose, acting queen. “So that’s weapons, and shelter, and keeping the militia from stabbing lesser threats, hopefully. Water’s no problem, not with how many paths lead to the river. So that leaves food, and forcing the Raffertys’ hand.”
As it turned out, there was one party in Twokins who’d serve for both. Aaron turned to Rose.
“My queen,” he said, “how would you like an introduction to the Marquise de Rats?”